Thanks, folks, I thought that video looked way clumsier than I remembered from Blue Mars.

On another subject ... flight ...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Masami Kuramoto

That's not the only reason. Some creators believe that there's a higher level of immersion if it's not possible to get from anywhere to anywhere instantly. Level designs in video games often include teasers, i.e. locations are shown to the player before they become accessible. The player is supposed to explore the landscape just like he would do in the real world.

If I want to explore landscapes in the real world, I'll browse Google Street View.

Quote:

I frequently walk around sims even if flight is enabled.

So do I. If I feel like it. But if flight isn't enabled I'll turn it back on if I don't feel like it. This is VR, not the real world. And it's not a FPS, nobody loses anything if I "cheat". Turning off flight is churlish, and I don't see why I should put up with it, ever. First time or not.

Thanks, folks, I thought that video looked way clumsier than I remembered from Blue Mars.

On another subject ... flight ...

If I want to explore landscapes in the real world, I'll browse Google Street View.

So do I. If I feel like it. But if flight isn't enabled I'll turn it back on if I don't feel like it. This is VR, not the real world. And it's not a FPS, nobody loses anything if I "cheat". Turning off flight is churlish, and I don't see why I should put up with it, ever. First time or not.

I might be okay with no flight, if a map were available so I knew where/how to get where I needed to go. Might.

(2) That would be me building that stuff. Until they implemented a follow cam, ceiling heights less then 3 meters look cramped, and then doorways look stupid if you make them actual size (about 2m tall). In fact the other houses in Tharsis have various door sizes, room dimensions, and ceiling heights exactly to test that stuff out. Go ahead and visit and tell me which house you like best. I have my own opinions, but I would like to hear what other people think.

Those are the same excuses I hear from builders in SL. If this keeps up, I'll be convinced that Blue Mars has revolutionized nothing. (._.)

Those are the same excuses I hear from builders in SL. If this keeps up, I'll be convinced that Blue Mars has revolutionized nothing. (._.)

It's not an excuse, it's a fact of the viewpoint. In real life your eyes are in your head. In a "first person shooter" they also are at that location. Blue Mars has third person view as the default. That forces larger rooms and ceilings and lower density landscapes, otherwise objects end up between the avatar and viewpoint too often.

I'm quite aware of the size distortion in SL. Part of why I did those houses in different sizes was to see how little distortion I can get away with.

There are *no* other choices. Either the offset of the viewpoint from the avatar's head is 0, or greater than 0. A smart camera might help, if it doesn't make people queasy. That means if there is a wall or tree in the way, move the camera the least amount so that you have a clear view of the avatar

It's not an excuse, it's a fact of the viewpoint. In real life your eyes are in your head. In a "first person shooter" they also are at that location. Blue Mars has third person view as the default. That forces larger rooms and ceilings and lower density landscapes, otherwise objects end up between the avatar and viewpoint too often.

A much much better solution is to suppress rendering objects that get between the avatar and the viewpoint. I've seen that done in games before, either the objects ghost out or they vanish completely.

Objects actually do "ghost". I've noticed that when standing close to, say, a wall and panning around.

Wrt the jerky vid. Yeah, that is extremely bad fps-wise. I admittedly do not log in much, so I may be mis-remembering the jitter bit. I def have no probs with the sandbox editor.

Wrt the flying bit. Was talking to a few on our skype dev channel and they mentioned that it is a matter of setting out the free camera and assigning hot-keys to fly, stop flying, etc. I'll be taking a look before my next city deploy, bc as it turns out, it sounds fairly simplistic. Either way, I do agree about providing fly as an option.

That's not the only reason. Some creators believe that there's a higher level of immersion if it's not possible to get from anywhere to anywhere instantly. Level designs in video games often include teasers, i.e. locations are shown to the player before they become accessible. The player is supposed to explore the landscape just like he would do in the real world.

I actually like this approach. In fact I frequently walk around sims even if flight is enabled.

Of course this is only fun the first time. There should be a way to disable flight only for first-time visitors until they acquire some kind of flight assist item that is hidden somewhere in the region.

Maybe Avatars should just naturally get fatter unless the person walks occasionally.

But what if a vehicle was available? For certain cities, flying wouldn't make sense.

I don't think it's got anything to do with the city, it has to do with whether you're role-playing a resident or you're just a tourist.

One idea that just popped into my crazy little brain is overlaid cities... if you want to access resident content, you get a "resident kit" that does a few things:

1. It includes avatars/costumes/equipment suited to local role play.

2. It lets you access the "residents overlay" In the "resident overlay" you interact only with residents. In the "tourist overlay" you can interact with tourists, and (depending on the role play) residents in teh resident overlay. Tourists can only interact with people in the tourist overlay. Some content may only be visible in the resident overlay.

3. In the "resident overlay" you have resident restrictions. No flying. No running. No walking (residents are birds, maybe?).

It would be hard to implement this in SL, but since the BM city is primarily a data store and message router and people can't block each other, it would mostly be a matter of controlling how you route messages between overlays.

No fly sims in SL make me peeved - especially when a sim is badly constructed and you fall through the floor and have no means of remedying the situation - cause usually they've disallowed TP as well. Totally stupid. (had this happen to me last week - the sim builder included a TP box underground to go back to the landing point - which of course didn't work either and left me stuck underground)

Even in an RP sim where flying is not allowed because of the story line - I would like it if the sim owner would leave the ability to fly on - so that you can get out of a bind if necessary. (shit happens all the time, and must be remedied in RP). And even if you do not TP in the story line, it is very convenient to be able to TP to get to where the story picks up.

No fly sims in SL make me peeved - especially when a sim is badly constructed and you fall through the floor and have no means of remedying the situation - cause usually they've disallowed TP as well.

So true! Back when I had a Digital DNA build in SL, I had this huge geodesic sphere with various platform levels... and no fly on the whole sim. While I tried to ensure that people could not fall through. Some would invariably go over the side and get stuck in the bottom. Including my bots! One day, when I was puttering around, someone shouted, "how do i get out of this prison?!?" The person had gone over the railing and was stuck in the bottom. They kept trying to run up the side high enough to jump onto the platform. I turned on fly and apologized profusely for being so dumb to turn it off in the first place. Lesson learned!

the funny thing is, this bobbing up and down shaking and lumpy movement in Blue Mars is absolutely not in any of the Crysis games.

If you have the Wars editor, just go into game mode in your mod, and press F1 to enter third person mode, and you will see what I mean in your level.

Still searching for a way to make the camera behave nicer though. I suspect some coding has to be done to the client to do this though. S'ok, if one has the Crysis Wars SDK - you can change the client code, they give it to you.

There are *no* other choices. Either the offset of the viewpoint from the avatar's head is 0, or greater than 0. A smart camera might help, if it doesn't make people queasy. That means if there is a wall or tree in the way, move the camera the least amount so that you have a clear view of the avatar

this is nuts, I have fixed the third person viewpoint simply by debug settings in Second Life.

its just the fact of people who don't pay attention to scale. Do it by the numbers and it won't happen to you.

I don't think it's got anything to do with the city, it has to do with whether you're role-playing a resident or you're just a tourist.

One idea that just popped into my crazy little brain is overlaid cities... if you want to access resident content, you get a "resident kit" that does a few things:

1. It includes avatars/costumes/equipment suited to local role play.

2. It lets you access the "residents overlay" In the "resident overlay" you interact only with residents. In the "tourist overlay" you can interact with tourists, and (depending on the role play) residents in teh resident overlay. Tourists can only interact with people in the tourist overlay. Some content may only be visible in the resident overlay.

3. In the "resident overlay" you have resident restrictions. No flying. No running. No walking (residents are birds, maybe?).

It would be hard to implement this in SL, but since the BM city is primarily a data store and message router and people can't block each other, it would mostly be a matter of controlling how you route messages between overlays.

If you're a tourist, you would be disrupting roleplay if you're flying overhead. A vehicle system or a good teleport system would ameliorate that.

Objects actually do "ghost". I've noticed that when standing close to, say, a wall and panning around.

Wrt the jerky vid. Yeah, that is extremely bad fps-wise. I admittedly do not log in much, so I may be mis-remembering the jitter bit. I def have no probs with the sandbox editor.

Wrt the flying bit. Was talking to a few on our skype dev channel and they mentioned that it is a matter of setting out the free camera and assigning hot-keys to fly, stop flying, etc. I'll be taking a look before my next city deploy, bc as it turns out, it sounds fairly simplistic. Either way, I do agree about providing fly as an option.

Yes, that makes perfect sense. In New Venice you can't see yourself flying and you do, in fact, stay where you left until you hit Q which drops you at the camera point? You actually walk/move the direction you are moving the camera too, as I've ended up in bushes and such. Kludgy, but vastly better than nothing.

On the question of scale - there is really nothing stopping developers from sticking absolutely to a 1:1 scale. I'd go further, and say that it is imperative that they do so; to start making things jumbo-sized now is just to unlease a runaway effect in which ever-more unrealistically enlarged objects add only an incremental distortion to an already distorted world. Thus, bit by bit, all cohesion disappears.

On the question of scale - there is really nothing stopping developers from sticking absolutely to a 1:1 scale. I'd go further, and say that it is imperative that they do so; to start making things jumbo-sized now is just to unlease a runaway effect in which ever-more unrealistically enlarged objects add only an incremental distortion to an already distorted world. Thus, bit by bit, all cohesion disappears.

Dr. Peter Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.

Tourists don't interact with the resident overlay at all. Residents wouldn't see them, they wouldn't see residents in the Resident overlay.

You could do this in several ways with the BM software:

- Have your main roleplay city only accessed by people who have signed up somehow (paid a fee, registered on a website, etc). Tourists can visit another "city" (ie game level), which has identical content except for some settings changed like fly and detached camera, and perhaps shopping enabled so you can kit up. Local chat and avatar visibility does not cross between cities

- Alternately, have tourists arrive at an instanced "Residence" above the main city. Since you cannot see into a residence from the outside. regular roleplayers cannot see them. You would have to limit local chat distance possibly. This would give tourists an overview of the city (your can see *out* from a Residence). If the viewpoint is too limited from one Residence location, you can set up several.

- Alternately set up walls/floors that are one-way transparent, possibly with occluders, to hide the tourists and keep them out of the roleplay areas.